Whether you are preparing for a major race, practicing for a night event or just wanting to just brush up on some of the basics, catching features is the ultimate supplement to your training!

For those not familiar with catching features (CF), it is a computer game played by a number of orienteer’s from around the world which simulates running a race and enables competitors to be able to compare splits and route choices with ease. This is really handy for getting extra time on maps and running a large number of races in a short amount of time.

Several top NZ orienteer’s, such as Ross Morrison, Matt Ogden, and Tim Robertson have used CF to get more time on maps and hone their map reading skills.

Over this year as it has become more difficult to make it to some club events due to uni, I have been beginning to follow in their footsteps so to speak, and started playing CF much more regularly in order to maintain my own map reading. During the past 30 days I have competed in approximately 90 races (on the right) and have been playing around about an hour every day! I feel this has really helped to improve my ability to choose the optimum route choices and my quick decision making.

Hopefully like last year NBH will trace a map of sprint area from Google maps. Which The Moose will attempt to convert into CF, so that we can use it to practice for the JWOC sprint. In Czech Republic it was the perfect preparation for me. I’m not sure about the others in the team, but come race day I was able to run as hard as I could without as worry as we had already tested nearly every possible route choice!

….and now that I’ve finally done a blog post, it’s back to playing some catching features.